Tag: mother!

Goryeojang

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Over fifty years old, Goryeojang is sadly available as only a print with two reels (three and six) missing. The LKFF screened the version where the missing scenes are explained by a brief series of intertitles so that the rest of the film can make sense. It’s a tough film to pigeonhole. A description like period drama, which genre it absolutely fits, proves woefully inadequate as a description. To a Western viewer, it plays out like a classic fairy tale with archetypal characters and considerable amounts of cruelty. The art direction is light years away from any sort of social realism with its rural sets obviously artificially constructed in a studio, recalling (to name but one obvious example) The Singing Ringing Tree (Francesco Stefani, 1957).

The concept of Goryeojang – taking your elders up a mountain when they reach 70 so that they can face death – is central to the world conjured here and all the characters accept the idea as part of their fate. This idea introduced in an opening, present day, TV discussion programme which is never referred to again in the film (perhaps the payoff came in one of the missing reels). Everything else takes place in Korea’s Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392). Keum (Ju Jeung-ryu) has remained in the village past her 70th birthday not out of some desire for self-preservation and longevity which we in the materialist West would recognise, but rather because her adult son Gu-ryong (Kim Jin-kyu) isn’t yet married and she wants to make sure that happens for him before she goes away to die.

Throughout the narrative a lady shaman loiters around the village’s sacred tree enacting strange songs and rituals to ensure local life proceeds according to tradition as it should. Early on, she prophesies to young mum Keum that the latter’s son will eventually kill the ten sons of the man Keum plans to marry, a prophecy which will overshadow everything that follows.

While her new husband in question is kind enough to her young son Gu-ryong, the former’s ten sons prove considerably less charitable and set the boy up in a game of blind man’s bluff wherein, while the boy is blindfolded, they place a venomous snake in his path which bites his leg when he unwittingly walks into it. This leaves the boy crippled.

Twenty years later as an adult, the boy has become socially ostracised as no able-bodied woman will marry him. He’s also done rather well for himself causing considerable enmity between him and his ten stepbrothers. When Gu-ryong eventually marries a mute, they kidnap and gang rape her, leaving him on his own again. Later, he adopts a young girl with a pockmarked face Ye-on, another outcast who like Gu-ryong didn’t fit in with their former cruel siblings.

With the area in the grip of hunger caused by drought, the lady shaman insists that Gu-ryong must take Keum up the mountain and leave her there to appease the gods who will then send the much-needed rain.

Sequences such as the blind man’s buff/snake episode, the gang-rape of the mute and, most particularly, the late scene at the mountain top where Gu-ryong must abandon the aged Keum to her fate lodge in the memory of the viewer. The latter sequence delivers a place littered with human skulls and bones across which Gu-ryong traverses back and forth as he tries to leave but his mum keeps finding last words to say or suggestions to make before he leaves her forever. Director Kim milks this for all it’s worth, yet the performances are so heartfelt and the material so disturbing that it really gets under your skin. Most of Kim’s films are set in the present day, so the period historical nature of this one is something of an exception. The sex, violence and cruelty of the narrative is, however, in keeping with many of his other films, as is the almost fairy tale like quality.

Goryeojang is sometimes also known as Burying The Old Alive.

Ieoh Island (1987) Director: Kim Ki-young, Tuesday, 12 November⋅18:15 ICA, book here.

Goryeojang plays in LKFF, The London Korean Film Festival. Watch the film trailer below:

A US Blu-ray of Goryeojang is released by the Korean Film Archive on November 14th. Available here.

Drive (Pulsión)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This Argentinan short, although computer generated, has the feel of stop-motion. It brings to mind work by Lars Von Trier, the Brothers Quay, Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. A narrative conveyed by a series of disturbing vignettes (think: the opening minutes of Melancholia (Lars Von Trier, 2011) is put together with the same kind of fastidious technical attention to detail you find in the Quay Brothers’ films. A couple of scenes borrow directly from one of the murders in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), but in a clever way that shocks you much as those scenes in Psycho originally did. There’s a Lynchian feel about the whole thing – not just in the strange, quasi-industrial sounds recalling Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) or the weird lighting and heavily controlled mise-en-scène, but also in the overall feel of strange and terrible things happening within families and local communities, people adrift within the darkness of human existence.

One single viewing is not enough for this film which really only reveals itself on repeated viewings. There’s so much going on here in the characters of a father, a mother, a teenage boy and flashbacks to the teenager as a small baby. After the death of the father who is run over while drunk, the relationship between the son and the mother moves into abuse as she hits him for not eating his food and voyeurism as he spies on her through her bedroom keyhole, referencing similar scenarios in Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) and, again, Psycho. Added to the mix are an animal corpse, a gratuitous rabbit killing and human murders. One particularly shocking scene involves the boy’s estranged friend kissing a girl near an abandoned, wrecked car and the boy hurling a brick at the amorous couple from behind a wall.

The vignettes make the locations appear as model sets suspended in darkness, each built upon a square patch of ground lifted from a wider Cartesian grid. These scenes don’t just appear then disappear in time, their appearance is also isolated spatially from everything around them. It’s an extremely unsettling experience and a unique, highly idiosyncratic vision. One can imagine Casavecchia going on to further forays short or feature length, animation or live action. If he does start working in live action, I hope he keeps returning to animation too because his use of the medium is part of the reason the film works as well as it does here – and it feels as if he has a great deal more to offer audiences.

Drive (Pulsión) played in Annecy where it won a jury distinction for powerful storytelling. Watch the film trailer below:

1985

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Here’s a Christmas movie with a difference. It’s December 1985 and young New York ad agency man Adrian (Cory Michael Smith) flies home to Texas to see his family for the first time in several years. Tensions are immediately apparent between go-getter son and his blue-collar worker father Dale (Michael Chiklis) from the moment the latter picks him up from the airport. Once Adrian gets to the house, his devoted mother Eileen (Virginia Madsen) can’t stop fussing over him while his younger brother Andrew (Aidan Langford), in his early teens, is distant having never forgiven Adrian for leaving.

Each of the family members presents Adrian with a different challenge. Dad is horrified at his Christmas present of an expensive leather jacket while Adrian is slightly shocked to receive a brand new Bible. Mom encourages him to call up Carly (Jamie Chung), a girl with whom Adrian grew up who also left Texas and is likewise home for the holidays and who he hasn’t seen for years. Andrew quit the school football team for its drama society, which is giving him issues with the father who understands contact sports but doesn’t really get the arts.

Underneath all of this is the presence of the local conservative Christian church, briefly heard as dad sits listening to sermons on a Christian radio station and seen as a worship service which the family attend in Sunday best where Adrian struggles to sing the words of hymns which make him uneasy. Elsewhere, Adrian has an embarrassing encounter with former high school jock turned supermarket manager Mark (Ryan Piers Williams) who has become a Christian and apologises for his past treatment of Adrian, although the two clearly have nothing in common.

Adrian learns from Andrew that his younger brother’s Madonna music cassettes and Bryan Adams poster have been taken off him because the local pastor deems them ungodly. When Andrew discovers that his brother saw Madonna on tour, he suddenly has a new-found respect for him. As a covert Christmas present, Adrian gives him a $100 voucher for the local Sound Warehouse to replenish his audio cassette collection, admonishing Andrew to keep his purchases hidden.

Contacting Carly, Adrian is invited to see her do an impressive improv stand-up gig where she expresses “all the shit you daredn’t say in real life”. Following some time at a dance club, they go back to hers which ends badly when she comes on strong to him but he isn’t really interested. As he tells her, “I’ve had a shitty year.”

Shot in aesthetically pleasing black and white by Ten’s cameraman and co-screenwriter Hutch, this boasts a strong script with deftly sketched characters and is beautifully cast and acted to boot. It completely understands its chosen time period of the mid-eighties, a time of LP records and portable music cassette players, before mobile phones and the internet existed. The film grasps very profound topics: the pain of the gay community being decimated by the AIDS virus in urban locations like New York and the deficiencies of Bible Belt Protestant fundamentalism in its inability to comfort those feeling that pain. And it grasps them without judgement of one side or another.

This is full of genuinely touching moments. Via an overheard conversation in another room, Adrian hears his mother tell his father he really ought to wear that leather jacket to work. Carly’s stand-up routine details her heartfelt experiences of racism as a Korean-American. And in a frank conversation with his mother, Adrian learns that she… well, you’ll have to see the film to find out.

Most people have experienced the joys and heartaches of spending time with their families at Christmas. While 1985 is set in the Christmas of that year, and some of its issues are specific to that date and time, there’s also much here that relates to wider human issues of family, how children deal with parents and siblings, how parents deal with children and how, sometimes, with the best intentions, that can all go horribly wrong. And can then sometimes, somehow, tentatively, in small steps, be at least partly put right.

A Christmas treat.

1985 is out in the UK on Thursday, December 20th, and then on VoD on Monday, December 24th. Watch the film trailer below:

Mothers (Dangshinui Bootak)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Hyo-jin (Im Soo-jung) and her stepson Jong-wook (Yoon Chan-yong) didn’t really know how to react when his father died. And they haven’t seen each other for around a decade. But now, the grandmother who’s been looking after the boy in the interim is no longer in any fit state to do so. So, would she be able to take the boy in?

It’s a good question. Hyo-jin’s already busy running an academy to teach teenagers and her assistant Mi-ran (Lee Sang-hee) is pregnant with another child. And Hyo-jin’s relationship with her own mother is hardly exemplary – it seems that whatever Hyo-jin does, her mother criticises or disapproves.

A further mother appears in the shape of a different female, Joo-mi (Seo Shin-ae), a friend of Jong-wook who is not exactly his girlfriend, more a companion. Initially, she gets on better with his mother than he does, for instance ringing Hyo-jin to let her know where her son is when he doesn’t want anything to do with his mother and won’t even call her.

Then Joo-mi announces she’s pregnant. Jong-wook is not the father. (We’ve seen no sign of any physical sexual activity between them). He likes the idea of parenting a child. She, on the other hand, thinks the child would be better off if adopted by a responsible family.

There is great potential here for exploring all manner of complex mother/daughter, mother/son, mother/foetus relationships and director Lee Dong-eun does so by complex, almost novelistic dialogue. The filmmaker has an extraordinary sense of flow about the way he shoots scenes with his excellent cast. This striking quality is one the passable but somewhat insipid trailer, with its much faster cutting, completely fails to convey.

Some of the difficult behaviour of the boy towards his mother is anticipated by her behaviour towards her own mother in earlier scenes. The way this is handled within the larger body of the narrative is extremely subtle, not at all forced and, consequently, most impressive. Jong-wook aside, since he plays quite a pivotal role in the proceedings, the male characters are largely peripheral with an assortment of female characters major and minor to the fore.

I’m not sure if this is a exactly ‘woman’s picture’, although it certainly contains much material of interest to women. Watching as a man, I found its situations drew me in while the deftly sketched characters held my attention. Its concerns may be undeniably feminine concerns, but at the same time they’re the sort that interest not only women but also men.

Mothers could so easily descend into mawkishness, sappiness or sentimentality, but it never does so and is all the better for it, opting instead to deal in intelligent observation of ordinary lives. That may have something to do with it being an independent rather than a mainstream Korean movie. Whatever, it makes for fascinating viewing.

Mothers plays in the London Korean Film Festival. Watch the film trailer below:

Phantom Thread

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

American director Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film to be set in England ostensibly concerns a ladies’ dress designer to the rich and famous in the 1950s. It moves between London where Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) works and the house in the country where he relaxes. It also moves between the obsessive, creative designer and his efficient, business-minded sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) and Alma (Vicky Krieps), the woman he meets and comes slowly but surely to depend on as his model, muse and partner. Beneath the surface, it’s about relationships, manipulation and control.

There’s also the two siblings’ long dead mother with whom Reynolds – basically a mother’s boy – is obsessed. So much so that, when he falls ill (possibly fatally), he sees her standing by the wall of his bedroom and speaks to her (she doesn’t respond). We know it’s her because of a photograph seen earlier: the apparition gives away no more information than the photograph. “Always carry it with you”, he tells Alma on their first date. He likes sewing things – photographs coins, messages – into clothing. His mother’s picture is sewn into his coat lining.

When I say first date… Well, Reynolds wines and dines Alma, a very ordinary waitress with a slight German accent who’s working at a small village hotel, then takes her back to his house in the country… so that he can try out material on her torso and start designing a dress for her. Later, he gets out his tape measure just in time for Cyril to turn up and write down Alma’s measurements as Reynolds calls them out.

The narrative parades a bewildering array of House of Woodcock clientele, from fans who would give anything to wear one of his dresses (swiftly dismissed from the Woodcock restaurant table by Cyril) to royalty with entourage, from a well-paying but ultimately self-loathing drunk to Alma the muse. Reynolds and Alma remove a commissioned dress from the drunk’s body as she sleeps her stupor off. “Not worthy of the House of Woodcock”, says Alma.

Also on show is the dress design, manufacture and modelling display process, complete with a team of seamstresses who, when Reynolds falls ill and collapses onto a dress, have to work late in order to repair it for delivery abroad the next morning.

By far the most interesting aspect of the film, however, is the interplay between the three main characters. Reynolds can be stubborn, telling Alma she’s making too much noise buttering her toast at breakfast which destroys the rest of his working day. Alma obsessively loves Reynolds and desires to have him and his time on her own terms. As such, she is more than his match. As too is Cyril. A power struggle between the two women is inevitable. Even more interesting, picking mushrooms in the country, Alma decides that the only way to get Reynolds under her control may be to poison him, something with which Reynolds, once he realises what she’s up to, readily complies.

So although this has all the trappings of a film about fashion and clothes design (specifically dresses) and more than satisfies on that level, and while it’s also beautifully paced and photographed and boasts a fantastic period score by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame, the film plays out less as a 1950s period costume piece and more as a drama about some very dark interpersonal subject matter indeed. It feels less epic than certain of Anderson’s earlier offerings (Boogie Nights/1997, Magnolia/1999, The Master/2012) and closer to his more intimate debut Hard Eight a.k.a. Sydney (1996) and his other Day-Lewis collaboration There Will Be Blood (2012). Hard Eight shows a lowlife US world and Blood a self-made man. However, Thread’s characters are most definitely English (or German immigrant in Alma’s case) and part of the circus surrounding and servicing the privileged classes.

We’d love to see Anderson dealing with something that gets under the skin of ordinary, non-privileged Brits rather than the well-heeled types so often portrayed in US and indeed British dramas. For now, though, the slow-burning Phantom Thread will do very nicely, thank you.

Phantom Thread is out in the UK on Friday, February 2nd. The film has received six Oscar nominations. On Netflix in January 2020.

2017 is a VERY BAD year for motherhood… well, at least in cinema!

Posted on by victorfraga

The largest film festival in the UK has finally drawn to a close, and we have unearthed nearly 40 dirty gems exclusively for you. They are guaranteed to keep your film schedule busy for the next 12 months or so. Just make sure you follow us on Twitter or Facebook for the latest updates, theatrical releases and of course… the dirtiest thoughts on what’s happening in the cinema world in the UK and elsewhere.

Andrey Zvyagentsyev’s tender and yet extremely disturbing drama Loveless has just snatched the top prize at the BFI London Film Festival. Our editor Victor Fraga thought that the film was an allegory of modern Russia, a country that does not look after its own children. His previous films The Return (2003) and Leviathan (2014) achieve a similarly bleak result, although the use the subjects of corruption and of fatherhood (respectively) in order to do so.

We soon realised that a number of films released in 2017 painted a very strange portrait of motherhood, even if their language was entirely different and so were their objectives. There were bloodthirsty unborn babies in at least two films, two stolen children and plenty of comparisons to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). What connects all of these films is an unusual pregnancy and a very unorthodox motherly bond. You might want to avoid this list in case you are feeling a little broody this year!

Don’t forget to click on the film titles in order to accede to its respective dirty review.

1. Loveless (Andrey Zvyagentsev):

Mother Russia has failed it children. It has neglected and relegated them to a life without hope and love. The latest movie by Andrey Zvyagintsev, possibly the biggest exponent in Russia cinema right now, is a bleak allegory of life in Russia. People carry on with their existences in a robotic and dehumanised fashion, without any regard for their neighbours, family and other citizens. Not even their own offspring. Yet, who’s to blame them? They are too busy searching for a purpose and a solution for their very own loveless predicament.

And Zhenya’s description of motherhood and hate for her own son is shocking. She despises him for nearly cleaving her in twain at birth, and she simply cannot stand his very sight. It is no exaggeration to claim that Loveless is a metaphor of a failed Mother Russia. Andrey Zvyagintsev has dotted the film with political reports coming from the radio, conveniently reminding viewers that our private life is an extension of the public sphere.

2. mother! (Darren Aronofsky):

Maverick visionary Aronofsky’s psychological horror has a spoonful of Polanski, a dash of Hitchcock, a pinch of Kubrick and even a squeeze of Ken Russell, all topped with a sterling cast. His house burned up in a fire. Then he (Javier Bardem) found her (Jennifer Lawrence) and as he began to rebuild his life, so she began to rebuild the house. Her work is well on its way to completion. Outside the house lie tranquil, golden fields. He is an acclaimed poet and hasn’t written anything for a long time. The couple live in an hermetic bubble. At least she does.

The film divides neatly into three acts which could be labelled: home building, pregnancy, motherhood. Yet each section follows roughly the same path: her idyllic existence is upset as more and more people arrive and she becomes more and more agitated. This very creative cinematic experiment has been very divisive: many simply loved it, and others found it entirely pointless.

3. Prevenge (Alice Lowe):

The female experience of pregnancy in film is something not known for its jovial depictions. Simply viewing Rosemary Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) one can see that child bearing is a painful endeavour, regardless of whether it’s the Devil’s child or not. Akin to Polanski’s film, Alice Lowe’s directorial and writing debut uses the horror genre as a vice to explore femininity and isolation. Unlike numerous egotistical star driven directorial debuts, Prevenge is a strange concoction of the slasher horror and comedy – making for a truly original recipe of British independent filmmaking.

Notably Lowe’s breakout performance came in Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers (2012) and her comic chops are again discovered in her debut. Yet, behind this comedic veneer, the film revels in its sadistic presentations of gore. Although not overt in its comedic tone, the film and Lowe’s performance are highly deadpan. Comparable to the films of Wheatley, Lowe’s debut is chilling and ruthless in its execution (no pun intended).

Surprisingly filmed over a tight 11-day schedule, Prevenge does not fail on its innovative title and narrative. Its focus on femininity and pregnancy’s isolation are relatively untested waters when it comes British cinema.

4. The Eyes of my Mother (Nicolas Pesce):

A mother (Diana Agostini), who was previously an eye surgeon in Portugal, lives with her husband and their young daughter Francisca (Kika Magalhães) in a secluded farm somewhere in the remote American countryside. She gives her daughter anatomy lessons from a very young age, probably unaware that Francisca would soon use her acquired skills in the most unorthodox ways imaginable. One day an intruder named Charlie breaks into their house and kills her mother, but the criminal is soon subdued and becomes a prisoner and guinea pig for the little girl’s morbid experiments. Francisca soon grows up, and the intensity of the anatomic and psychological escalates to the highest level imaginable, as she recruits new victims to submit to her sadistic ordeals.

The Eyes of my Mother skillfully blends interrupted motherhood (twice, but you must watch the film in order to understand why), female psychosis, isolation and religion in one big pan. The sharp black and white photography renders the grueling scenes more watchable and gives the film an eerie veneer, in a way similar to Hitchcock Psycho(1960) – the director opted for black and white because he wanted to spare audiences from the violence of the colour red in the famous shower sequence.

5. Good Manners (Marco Dutra/Juliana Rojas):

This dirtylicious Brazilian horror also premiered during the BFI London Film Festival.

It starts out as an awkward domestic drama, as the gorgeous, upper-class, white and pregnant Ana (Marjorie Estiano) hires the black babysitter Clara (Isabél Zuaa). At first, Ana is reluctant to take Clara on board because she lacks credentials: she did not finish nursing school and she has never looked after babies. To boot, one of her referees doesn’t quite sing her praises. Yet, there is something soothing and comforting about the very beautiful and polite stranger. The Black Portuguese actress (Zuaa was born in Lisbon, yet she has a perfect Brazilian accent in the movie) exudes charm, talent and charisma, and I have absolutely no doubt that she has a bright future ahead.

The subject of interrupted motherhood and isolation from society become central to the story, which takes a very unexpected twist roughly in the middle of the 127-minute narrative. Good Manners then incorporates easily recognisable devices from a number of horror films, such as Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981) and the more recent French cannibal flick Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2017). Oh, and there is a giant creature that looks a lot like a meerkat. Derivative elements are deftly combined in order to create a film with a singular identity, extraordinarily original in its format. Violence here acquires a fantastic dimension. Blood isn’t repulsive; it’s instead the ultimate maternal link. Meet is not murder.

mother!

Posted on by mjbstaging

His house burned up in a fire. Then he (Javier Bardem) found her (Jennifer Lawrence) and as he began to rebuild his life, so she began to rebuild the house. Her work is well on its way to completion. Outside the house lie tranquil, golden fields. He is an acclaimed poet and hasn’t written anything for a long time. The couple live in an hermetic bubble. At least she does.

That all changes when a stranger (Ed Harris) turns up and bonds with him. Suddenly she feels excluded. More new characters are soon to arrive – first the stranger’s attractive wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) then their two argumentative adult sons (real life siblings Domhnall and Brian Gleeson) then funeral guests.

He becomes increasingly obsessive recalling the writer in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980). As he overrides her wishes she becomes increasingly isolated recalling paranoia from Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby (both by Roman Polanski, 1965 and 1968 respectively). By the end, the house has been overrun by party-goers and riotous crowds behaving like the group elements from the highly controversial The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971). From the moment Ed Harris first appeared, this was obviously going to end badly.

The narrative is presented throughout in often lengthy takes from her point of view, either directly owing much to subjective camera experiment Lady In The Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947) or through shots of her acting within/reacting to the situation as it unfolds around her. There’s something of Hitchcock here too in the way the film constantly tortures its female lead.

Leaving aside the rather too neat book ending which sidesteps the need for backstory by some sleight of hand which doesn’t work too well, the film divides neatly into three acts which could be labelled: home building, pregnancy, motherhood. Yet each section follows roughly the same path: her idyllic existence is upset as more and more people arrive and she becomes more and more agitated.

It’s a film which might be viewed differently by men and women – and by introverts and extroverts. But as it builds, you wonder whether piling more and more outsiders onto the couple’s private world can really sustain the proceedings and, sure enough, although the film starts off very well, at some point as the numbers mount it gets rather tedious. Much of the time you can’t help feeling that the writer-director could have done more with less and done it quicker.

I’m all for Aronofsky being given the chance to make the movies he wants. When he’s good, as in Pi (1998), The Wrestler (2008), Black Swan (2010), he’s very good. He can even be good when derivative, Black Swan being in all but name a remake with ballerinas of anime epic Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) to which film Aronofsky owned the rights. (Perfect Blue is due for rerelease in cinemas on 31st October, so you’ll have the chance to judge for yourself then.)

So I don’t complain that mother! is derivative, only that it’s overly self-indulgent. Performances, production value and everything else here are top notch. It’s an interesting experiment and while I defend the director’s right to make it, I’m not especially enthusiastic about the end result.

mother! premiered at the 74th Venice International Film Festival and is out in the UK on Friday, September 15th.